Disengaged by a global pandemic for an unexpected, but welcome, long summer holiday with my family.

Working with Executives and stakeholders across the institution injected purpose and pace into the programme. Led over 40 Target Operating Model workshops with representatives from across Student Education Services to clarify the vision and expected benefits/outcomes. Undertook project deep-dives to ensure absolute scope alignment of all inflight and pipeline projects to programme blueprint. Provided regular updates to Programme Board and secured buy-in to reorientate the overall programme direction and focus through a global pandemic, resulting in the creation of a new tranche of work.Undertook a comprehensive review of core programme capabilities and put forward a detailed recommendations report to implement more robust programme governance and a number of core enabling capabilities designed to increase the chances of successfully delivering the programmes objectives.

Scope of work included undertaking project health checks across a portfolio of regulatory and mandatory payment initiatives, defining recovery plans, resetting stakeholders expectations, injecting predictability and rigour into delivery schedules, adjusting delivery approaches and enhancing delivery capability and team structure to reflect the remaining scope of work. Secured additional funding to implement these critical changes.

End-to-end programme management of a UK banking wide payments innovation in collaboration with Cheque & Credit Clearing Company, Pay UK and The Co-operative Bank to dramatically reduce cheque clearing timescales from 6 days down to next working day. Became first U.K. bank to complete rollout across all channels.

End-to-end project management of a diverse matrix team of finance and technology SMEs to replace legacy on-premise financial reconciliation capabilities with a cloud based Software as a Service capability. Provided delivery assurance and execution through RFP, supplier contracting, initial feasibility and pilot through to business case development and transition into project delivery.

Working closely with bank IT staff, IBM, SopraSteria Steria, numerous 3rd party suppliers and UK Payments Schemes throughout initial discovery and design ensured impacted business area were fully prepared and ready to execute multiple dress rehearsal and cut over events. This culminated in the final migration event in which The Co-operative Banks Mainframe and associated critical business services were successfully cut over without incident.

End-to-end programme delivery of over £20m of IT investment within the Group-wide Simplification Programme targeting the simplification and rationalisation of multiple Legacy IT systems and critical business processes following the acquisition of HBoS and subsequent merger with Lloyd’s TSB.

MARS Programme - Strategy and Operating Model work stream. Drove the production of the MARS Transition Plan for the proposed Co-Operative Banking Group acquisition of Lloyds TSB business from Sales Purchase Agreement to the point at which Co-Operative Retail Bank would be operating as a single integrated Bank under a common brand. Responsibilities included shaping high-level delivery approach, creation of Level 0 milestone plans, identification of enabling projects, assembling cost estimates and undertaking quality assurance reviews as well as developing risk mitigation strategies associated with the end-to-end delivery.

Accountable to the IT Head of Programme Delivery for end-to-end management of a portfolio of projects within the Simplification Programme including rollout of web-based email to the entire LTSB and C&G branch estate (circa 18,000 user deployment), enhancement to business critical Telephony, Counter and Back-office sales and servicing applications in support of lean interventions enabling business benefit realisation in excess of £5m pa.

Initially brought in to inject much needed focus, rigour (PRINCE2 concepts) and pace into the Business Intelligene & MI Release stream within the Banking Transformation Programme (bTp) - a critical programme over four years aimed at transforming the CBG Retail Banking organisation and IT landscape.Accountable to the End-to-End Data Manager for the delivery of the new strategic BI & MI platform solution integrated with the new Core Banking Platform. Managed a matrix team of subject matter experts, business analysts, 3rd parties and systems integrators to deliver optimal business solutions, approach and designs for the data migration to enable the creation of a new Integrated Bank on the new Core Banking Platform.Provided proactive business engagement throughout all aspects of end-to-end planning and functional design oversight of the new Core Banking Platform release including dependency management, change control, impact assessment, prioritisation of release deliverables and hotspot management and resolution.Provided strong leadership, direction and management of a matrix managed Business Validation team comprising business SME’s - internal and contract resource, third parties, external suppliers and system integrators across geographic locations in the UK and India.

I was accountable to the Retail Banking Operations CIO for all IT Change and Operational Service provided to Retail Banking Customer Services Directorate including delivery of a strategic group-wide complaint handling platform.

Partnering with IBM successfully delivered a £4.5m programme of change that improved functionality, performance and stability of the HBOS Group Workflow platform involving significant re-platforming and complex data migration activities across matrix-management of multi-disciplined teams both on and offshore.

Provided technical and end-to-end project management based services at various FTSE-100 companies as well as small-medium sized enterprises and start-ups (my own included).Responsibilities ranged from client-server development, technical team leading, technical sales support, project leadership and project management for project assignment periods of between 6 and 24 months.